Reviewed by Larry C. Skogen, Department
of History, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado

A Mormon friend once told me about a
conversation between the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Lenin and an American visitor. The
Bolshevik leader asked his guest to tell him about America's religion. The American
quickly explained to Lenin that the United States had no religion per se, because in
America there was a separation between church and state. However, Lenin, my friend tells
me, insisted that America did have a religion: Mormonism. This story may be apocryphal,
but it certainly does raise the question of whether the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints can be classified as the most American of America's religions. I will
not enter that debate, but I will propose, and long-time Weber State University historian
Donald Moorman aptly demonstrates, that the Mormon Church is inextricably connected to the
history of the American West. In fact, Mormon history, after Brigham Young's decision to
move his followers West, is as western as Kit Carson, George Custer, Wovoka, or Boeing
Aircraft. Moorman's story is full of all those best qualities in Western history which
keep enticing the American public back to that vast part of the country west of the
Mississippi River. In short, Camp Floyd and the Mormons is a good western history.

Moorman's book, published posthumously,
covers the three years from the Utah War-not really a war-to the beginning of the American
Civil War-war at its worst. For a decade before the Utah War, Mormons had experienced
overland westering; replicated their old Eastern societies in the harsh climes surrounding
the Great Salt Lake; fought with and accommodated to their Indian neighbors; and profited
from gold-seeking travelers passing through their beloved Deseret-all for one purpose: to
create and maintain their own theocratic Zion. Civil, political, and religious power
rested in the hands of Brigham Young and a few close advisors, and before the late 1850s
the federal government left the Saints alone. But growing war clouds in the East, Moorman
argues, persuaded President James Buchanan to send his army into Mormon country.
"Utah would serve as a testing ground," Moorman writes, "to reassert
federal control over a region claiming nominal independence from the Union" (17).
Young realized very quickly that his Nauvoo Legion was no match for the invading United
States Army commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston. Meeting only token resistance,
Johnston's army marched through Salt Lake City and established Camp Floyd. Three years
later Johnston resigned from the army and rushed to join the Confederacy while federal
troops dismantled the camp.

Moorman's interest is the impact these three
years had on Mormon life. A nonMormon himself, Moorman does not hide his great affection
and admiration for the Saints, or his empathy for their grief at the loss of Deseret with
the federal invasion into Utah. "Like an unsheathed sword piercing the very heart of
Mormonism," he writes, "(Camp Floyd] was an acknowledged symbol of federal
authority in the Great Basin and reflected the enigmatic attitude of the American people
towards the Mormons" (81). The fort and the federal power it represented challenged
the church's hegemony over the Saint's affairs. Moreover, cutting to the very soul of
Mormonism, the fort attracted society's worst elements, and they in turn corrupted Mormon
men and women, causing both to become very unsaintly. Moorman's descriptions of life in
and around the post are colorful and informative. Certainly he demonstrates his love
affair with the central issue of his research life: Camp Floyd.

If there is a weakness in the book, however,
it is that a prospective reader might pass over it thinking the subject too narrow.
Unfortunately, as co-author Gene Sessions points out in his preface, this work is
improperly named. It is about much more than Camp Floyd. In some chapters the post is of
only tangential interest. There are chapters dedicated to overland travel, federal
judicial officials, and Indian-white relations, all of which had little, if anything, to
do with Camp Floyd. But Moorman admits, for Washington officials Camp Floyd "had to
do with Mormons and not Indians" (217). His chapters on Indian affairs prove the
policy-makers right. While reading this book I found it easy to forget Camp Floyd
altogether. In fact, I found myself drawing comparisons between Camp Floyd and the
Mormons and John D. Unruh's seminal work, The Plains Across. The depth of
research in both books, the good old-fashioned narrative-style histories, and the authors'
obvious passion for their subjects kept drawing me to the comparisons. Camp Floyd and
the Mormons is about much more than either the camp or the Saints. Donald Moorman,
with the help of Gene Sessions, has bequeathed us good western history.